Rebecca is a Social Media Account Manager at News Xtend, with a Masters of Journalism. She enjoys learning more about SMBs and trying to keep up with the latest news in Digital Marketing. When she's not writing and reading, you'll find her cuddling her cats, or looking for the closest sweet treat.

Donuts and Instagram, a match made in heaven

Reading time: 5 minutes

“I love your stuff. Seriously, when I broke my foot, the only time I left the house, was once a week for six weeks when I’d come by for your donuts. They’re the best.”

Testimonials like these aren’t uncommon from customers at Nutie’s two cafes in Surry Hills and Balmain. Aside from being delicious, the cute and colourful sweet treats on offer are all gluten-free, and largely vegan – which explains why people are over the moon!

Coeliacs, people with gluten, dairy or egg intolerances, and vegans, often have to go without exciting treats – but not at Nutie. Here, chef and owner Sina Klug and her team recreate childhood favourites and invent new delights.

The cafe is small and cosy, with a large glass display case full of cakes, cookies, chocolates and tarts, plus trays of colourful donuts and a small kitchen nestled at the back. A steady stream of people arrive for a treat, a full lunch, perhaps a box of donuts for the office, or maybe just a coffee.

Sina isn’t a trained pastry chef, despite being named the Callebaut 2017 Young Inspirer of the Australian Pastry Scene. She’s entirely self-taught, and started baking gluten-free and vegan so that everyone could enjoy her treats.

“I grew up vegetarian in Germany in the 90s. So there weren’t many choices, and you get used to not having many choices. Then at uni I had two close friends who were coeliac and in Germany gluten-free is very hard to get,” she tells me.

When she moved to Sydney for a year long internship Sina began whipping up cookies, cakes and other treats for her colleagues in Sydney. She would come to work with a basket of treats, and on her way she’d stop at a local cafe to chat with the cute barista.

Cut to the end of the year, and the barista, Jacques, took Sina aside to ask her something. Would she like to go into business with him?

It wasn’t the date she was hoping for, but Sina said yes.

The pair started out with a stall at Bondi Markets.

“We were trying to have a go and we went from market to market. It’s not always that easy to get in, and they said ‘We like this. We’re going to give you a stall next week.’ Our first market was the week before Christmas. We baked 90 donuts and it took us till about 3 or 4am with the help of Jacques’ whole family.

After that we did the markets every week, and it kind of started growing. We started getting approached by other markets…Then we did the Night Noodle Markets, where we went from doing 90 donuts to 1000. “

Over time, it became clear that Nutie had a keen following. Such a following that in under four years, Nutie has grown to include two cafes, a successful City pop-up, and regular appearances at both local and interstate markets. Phew!

Part of the appeal of Nutie is that Sina takes suggestions from her customers about which treats she should whip up next. People ask for everything from vegan cheese, egg-free pavlova, vegan, gluten-free pancakes to mac ‘n cheese and wagon wheels.

Social media has been a key part of Nutie’s growth.

It’s easy to see why Nutie has been an Instagram success. The treats themselves are incredibly photogenic, giveaways are regularly featured, and the tone is fun, casual and interactive.

“Social media has probably played the most important role in how we built our business. Especially as a young start-up without any budget, social media is the best marketing you can get…I’ve practised a lot taking going photos, learning how it works and how you can reach the most people. We were able to build a very active community… That’s probably the main reason we’ve been able to grow the business to this point. Without social media, I don’t know where we would be.”

All this social media success is Sina’s work. She manages all the business’ social channels herself, to the disbelief of many.

“When we started, I didn’t even have a personal account, but now I’m at a point where I’m really enjoying it. It’s actually one of my favourite tasks in my job, next to experimenting in the kitchen. It’s such an amazing way to connect to our customers.”

Sina tries to post morning and evening but likes to leave a little room for spontaneity, depending on what’s happening in the kitchen.

At times, it can be difficult to deal with customers on social media who expect responses immediately. As a small business owner, Sina runs the social media alongside her roles in the kitchen, on the floor and behind the coffee machine!

Although Sina is the more public face of Nutie, she works closely with co-owner Jacques, now her partner. I wonder if it’s difficult to work so closely with her significant other?

“We actually work better because we understand each other. We know the other person’s strengths and weaknesses and we’re willing to go that extra step to help the other person out as well. Funnily enough, we’re always of the same opinion. We’ve never disagreed on anything in business. I think it’s very rare.”

While Jacques and Sina work well together, it can be difficult to, well, actually stop working. As business partners, it can be tempting to talk business even when they’re not working, so they occasionally have to ban work-talk in order to focus on other things.

“You’ve just got to set those boundaries sometimes,” she explains.

Nutie has experienced such success, so quickly, that it must be easy to lose track of just how far it has come. To combat this, Sina makes a point of celebrating the small things.

“Every little win, we’ll celebrate it. With the team, we’ll get everyone lunch and celebrate. Every moment along the way, we just try to cherish now.”

Of course, Nutie isn’t all donuts and sunshine; there are all the regular business challenges to contend with. Sina says it can be particularly difficult to strike a balance between working in the kitchen, serving and managing staff with the other side of the business – planning, goal setting and responding to enquiries.

“As a small business it’s always a hard balance of working on the business and in the business. Very often you try to save some costs, do as many shifts as you can yourself…and it leaves you with less time for the strategy and the business because you’re so caught up in just surviving every day in the actual shop. So for us, it was just making sure that we had the right staff that we could leave them by themselves without worrying. So now we can have full days just for admin, business development, projects, collaborations and things like that.”

Sina and Jacques still have big goals for Nutie. There’s another pop up on the way, and plans to open a permanent cafe in Melbourne.

The sweet cafes and their devoted customers are a testament to Sina and Jacques’ hard work, but Sina reminds me that they’ve been supported by others.

“There were so many moments when I was so close to giving up, but one thing that I learned is to not be afraid or ashamed to ask for help. It’s not a sign of weakness and there’s a lot of supportive people out there. Accept help.”

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